New Zealand is in the news around the world this week — and not in a good way. Contrary to the sort of fluff about hobbits and babies that the Labour government has become accustomed to, the news this week has been all about how a violent, misogynist mob was whipped up by an anti-woman bigot on the payroll of the government-funded media.
To say it’s not a good look is the least of it.
To really drive home the point of what the New Zealand left have regressed into, the intolerant violence, redolent of Mussolini’s blackshirts rampaging through the streets of Rome, took place in what had once been the site of a minor free speech movement.
In September 1969, hippies thronged to Auckland’s Albert Park to stand up for free speech, protest the Vietnam War, and enjoy the grass. It was part of a movement for free love and free minds that was sweeping the English-speaking world at the time. They called the weekend rock concerts ‘jumping Sundays’ after the hippies’ impromptu dancing.
Last Saturday, Albert Park was the site of a very different sort of event. This one was also part of a movement sweeping the English-speaking world; however it wasn’t part of a movement in favour of free speech, but of a movement that opposes it.
And opposes it, not just with bullhorns and screamed slogans, but fists, boots, knuckle-dusters and even what appeared to be a knife.
All because a woman tried to speak.
In Albert Park, she was prevented from speaking. One protester poured a can of tomato juice over her. She was surrounded by a large crowd that her security detail struggled to keep away from her. Keen-Minshull later said that she genuinely feared for her life. She left the country soon afterwards, cancelling her Wellington event.
Nor was this the only violence. An elderly man was elbowed in the face, and an elderly woman punched several times, both apparently by individuals protesting Keen-Minshull’s appearance.
Of course, Keen’s opponents were whipped into their mob frenzy by not just their inherent intolerance, but a steady campaign of lies and slander. Like this one:
In January of this year, Pink News reported that a speaker at an event organised by Keen-Minshull had quoted Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
In fact, what the speaker said was that the trans-rights activists were behaving exactly as Hitler propounded in his ugly manifesto:
“I know about language, and I know that this [gestures to counter-protesters] is based on something that we call the big lie.
“Do you know the big lie? The big lie was first described by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.
“The big lie is such a big lie that ordinary people like us think, ‘Well, that can’t be a lie because I would never tell such a big lie as that. We only lie in small ways.’
“The big lie, well there is one big lie going on, and it was begun by men in the early part of the 20th century. It began when they had an erotic fantasy and they decided they were going to sell us the big lie – and what is the big lie?
“The big lie is that trans women are women. But they’re not are they? They’re men and we know that.”
So, hardly rousing praise of the long-dead Nazi leader.
It should also be noted that that speaker was Lisa Morgan, who is perhaps best known for writing a book accusing Donald Trump of “achiev[ing] unthinking compliance… by using hypnotic confusion techniques which enable him to embed suggestions into his subjects’ unconscious minds”.
The logic of Pink News, then, would have it that anyone even accusing Kellie-Jay Keen of being a “Nazi” is, well, a Nazi. Because they used the same words as Hitler.
But, then, if you can convince yourself that men can be women, you’ll believe any stupidity.
This is the calibre of lies and smear that Kellie-Jay Keen is up against, from the legacy media in New Zealand, who’ve taken their millions off the government and are determined to spread its propaganda.
And drag New Zealand’s good name into the mud of ugly, intolerant, leftist violence.
In the end, though, none of this has much bearing in what happened on Saturday. A visitor to this country was prevented from speaking and made to fear for her life by violent bullies. She had her free speech rights violated, and the New Zealand police were nowhere to be seen.
Even more shamefully, New Zealand’s human rights commissioner, instead of reminding the mob of Keen’s right to free speech, was standing shoulder to shoulder with the woman-bashing misogynists.
But this ugly, shameful episode is all of a piece with where the New Zealand left and their media lapdogs are dragging their country’s reputation.
Only a few weeks ago, Richard Dawkins’ visit to these shores reminded us of the disgraceful actions of the Royal Society in investigating a number of its fellows after they wrote a letter defending science against attacks on it as intrinsically colonialist. Now New Zealand is making headlines around the world once again, and for all the wrong reasons.
That will be the legacy of this weekend’s event at Albert Park. It is difficult to imagine a more complete or a more shameful repudiation of a former generation of Kiwis’ embrace of love, tolerance, and free speech.
The Australia
But that was New Zealand. Now it’s becoming “Aotearoa” — and that is a very, very ugly and intolerant place to be.
